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Last official @ClarionWest #Writeathon Word Count

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I admit I was hoping to break 60K by the end of today, but to do that I’d have to be self-abusive and willing to write what–even by my lax first-draft standards–would be unsalvagable drivel. Pages upon pages of “And then McReporterpants did the thingie with the watchamacallit. Theodolite? Look this up later.”

So – today, words that are better than the above:

July 27 2,308 for a grand total of 58,378 words. Here’s what they looked like before I typed them:

Extremely rough draft, with chamomile tea.

(Sponsor me here! Win Naming Rights to an Island on Stormwrack!)

I had a look at the outline and I’m not as far from the end of the plot as I would have guessed. Maybe another 15,000 words until the thing’s Frankensteined together? I’ve never been good at making these kind of guesstimates.

What I did today to celebrate the end of the Write-A-Thon was go to the Urban Tea Merchant and spend two and a half hours imbibing Royal Darjeerling tea, little sandwiches and luxurious baked goodies while scribbling the above words. It was a very enjoyable wrap-up to the whole Write-A-Thon ritual; I commend it to you all.

I plan to keep up the current pace, of course, until I finish the draft. And then go back and rewrite, and rewrite some more, and then some more.

Buffy Rewatch, Write-A-Thon, And Everything

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I’m a bit squeezed at the moment, which is why no writing essay yesterday. But here is a link to the latest Buffy rewatch, on Dopplegangland. Go join the fray!

For those of you still considering whether to enter the Stormwrack Name-An-Island contest, which is my giveaway for the Clarion West Write-a-thon, you can walk away with the naming rights to an island nation for a cool $35. Here’s a snippet about Isle of Gold.

“Here we go,” she said. “Isle of Gold.”
“What’s it say?” Bram asked. He had picked up her videocamera and was using it to shoot all the opened books he’d set out.
She read: “Isle of Gold is one of five nations formerly known as the Piracy–”
“Of course. They would have pirates here.”
“A barren rock unfit for agriculture and without much of a fishery, its difficult-to-navigate coastal waters and dense military fortifications led to its becoming the treasury of a shifting alliance of thieves, smugglers and raiders during the decades of warfare that plagued the seas… okay, from the looks of it, a bunch of countries put together a fleet–”
“The Fleet, presumably.”

Latest Clarion West Write-a-Thon word counts (Sponsor me here! Win intangible things!):

July 24 1,150 for a total of 54,054
July 23 1,260 for a total of 52,904
July 22 411 for a total of 51,644
July 21 899 for a total of 51,233
July 20 777 for a total of 50,324
July 19 898 for a total of 49,547
July 18 1,192 for a total of 48,649

Full disclosure: I am about two thirds of the way through the book… I’ll hit 60,000 words before the Write-a-Thon is over, but I won’t have it quite drafted. I’m still pleased with how it’s gone, and planning to hold the same pace until I’ve got the draft done.

New Blue Review in Strange Horizons

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Tori Truslow of the ever-excellent Strange Horizons doesn’t love every word of Blue Magic, but does say this:

Besides Juanita, we get a gay male couple, bisexual Astrid, and transgender Ev. Thanks to the magical explosion, Ev is now able to have a male body—although Dellamonica does not fall back on magic as an excuse to ignore the potential complexities of transitioning as a middle-aged parent. I’m not in a position myself to assess how successful a portrayal he is, but I certainly believed in him and overall found the strong showing of queer characters—and the normalization of their queerness—refreshing.

This place, this time

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Here’s one of my early great blue heron shots, from 2010.

Great Blue Heron

It’s not bad, I know. The point is not this picture is great or abysmal… just that it’s not my best. I went looking for one of my earlier shots and this is the one I can bear to post. Herons were shiny new photographic subjects for me, and I remember the day I took this one, and I remember it was a happy experience.

This week, I took some shots I’m quite pleased with; they’re still on the camera. I also recently, in my pursuit of the best damned heron shot I could manage, knocked “Full heron in flight” off my personal list:

Stanley Park

Usually when they take off I’m not quite ready. This time I knew.

So… I can go for a better heron flying shot, but in some ways I can consider that a Thing I’ve Done.

I’m no ornithologist, but in many ways, I have these birds sussed. I chase them around the beaches and I know when they’re too busy looking for food to care if there’s a human around, and I can usually tell when something’s got them thinking about flying off. I can see if the sun’s so bright it’s going to wash out their white bits or if it’s too overcast for the camera to pick them effectively out of the grey of the sea. I got adolescent heron pee on my hat and my camera bag this week (thank Chaos for the hat) scoping out the newest crop of high-flying fishers.

There’s plenty of room above my best heron shots for me to keep improving at this. I am no pro. The bar has lots of room to go up. In my writing, I pursue this like a fiend–the ever smaller but oh so satisfying slices of ‘did that better!’ and ‘Oooh, so pretty!’ The things I wrote in the Stormwrack universe today blew my mind with joy. You’ll like them too.

But photography’s a hobby. It’s part of my day to day practice of making myself happy. The heron’s a familiar challenge, and getting pretty good shots of them has become easy. And while I’m not giving up picture-making or bird-chasing, because I really enjoy it, I also recognize that I am in a space where I need some challenges that come with a heavy dose of the unfamiliar. I need to take up some things that I know nothing about, am interested in but also daunted by. Things I–at least to some extent–suck at.

Which is a long-winded and literal but also metaphorical way of saying I’ve been very engaged lately in looking around at my life, and the herons in it. The things in it that are familiar, and comfortable, and easy. And I am considering ways to reframe some elements of that life so that they are uncomfortable, at least in the short term, and harder, and with any luck, even more gratifying.

It’s a good process, not entirely fun–because who wants to run toward discomfort? And, thus, it’s not been exactly painless. But even beginning has made me look at the familiar with refreshed love and an intense, electrifying sense of awareness.

I’ll keep you all posted on how it goes.

Point of View – the Basics

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This week’s writing essay is just a “What is,” and a “How to” on an important technical aspect of story structure–the workings of a thing we call Point of View.

Understanding point of view–POV, as we usually say–is as necessary to the process of writing as knowing the rules of the road is basic to learning to drive. If you don’t know which side of the road your car belongs on, or that you’re required to signal before turning, you are doomed to have a short career as a driver. (Or to use a medical analogy–if you can’t tell a human from a horse, your chances of becoming a doctor may be rather slim.)

Does that mean POV is dull? A dry and necessary fundamental, something to be gotten out of the way before moving on to fun and cool topics like voice and scenebuilding? Definitely not. The beauty and power of this element of writing is subtle, though, and once you have a good grip on it, it tends to work invisibly, behind the scenes. When you get into your car every morning, you don’t have to remind yourself to stop at traffic lights; it becomes so basic–so completely obvious–that the sight of an orange light will trigger the proper reaction in a driver without conscious thought.

An experienced driver rarely considers the intricacies of basic traffic law, but focus your attention on a few key details of this apparently dull phenomenon for a second:

1) Millions of people understand and agree on the basic rules and follow them.
2) Those “basics” allow these same people and their passengers to hurtle through space at hundreds of kilometers per hour and to travel significant vast distances in minutes.
3) Visualize the complex simplicity of a highway system, with its multi-lane traffic and the system of entrances and exits which allows travellers to move together and then separate as needed.
4) Last, consider the tragic crashes that sometimes result when people flout these agreed-upon rules.

Point of view is crucial in just the same way, and often just as invisible.

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